Her voice was barely louder than a whisper, and Jason wasn't quite sure he heard right. "What?"
She turned to him, her blue eyes shimmering with unshed tears. "I don't know who I am."
His brow furrowed, and his fingers stopped their movements. "What are you talking about?"
She cleared her throat in an attempt to rid herself of the huge lump that had formed there. "I'm twenty one years old, and I never knew I was adopted. At least not until the day before I moved here." She closed her eyes and the vision, not caring about the tears spilling down her cheeks. "I was just packing up the last of my things, checking throughout the house to make sure I had everything. . ."
Elizabeth entered the study, her eyes doing a quick sweep for anything that might've belong to her. Satisfied when she found nothing, her eyes caught on a collection of scrapbooks behind her father's desk. She decided to take a break and look through the old books, just out of curiosity.
The first one was all about Steven. It had everything in it; their mother's first sonogram picture, his hospital ID bracelet, a record of all his firsts, even his first lock of hair. She smiled at everything, wishing she could've been closer to her older bother.
The next book she removed belonged to Sarah. Hers was almost identical to Steven's in it's contents. Only hers didn't have quite so many pictures.
The last book belonged to Elizabeth. She was eager to see it's contents for the first time, never knowing until now that they existed. Her hands shook as they opened the cover, the smile on her face fading when she discovered that her book was drastically different from the first two. There were no sonogram pictures, no hospital bracelet, no "Baby's First" record, nothing. Just a smattering of pictures of her with distant relatives. None of her with Steven or Sarah, none with her parents. After the third page they were cut off altogether.
With each turn of another empty page, her heart grew heavier and heavier, her eyes blurring with tears that wouldn't fall. She knew that her parents never loved her best, but to be so cruel as to not keep her pictures? That was horrifying. Elizabeth was so distraught that she almost passed over the book's most important contents: a letter.
She blinked several times, making sure she wasn't seeing things, before she reached out to the paper. The warm kiss of her tears barely registered as she read the typed words:
Doctor Webber:
You don't know who I am, but I know you.
This is my daughter.
I can't possibly take care of her, and neither can her mother.
I know you'll do the right thing.
Elizabeth sat there for the longest time, the paper clenched between her fingers. It wasn't until Jeff Webber came though the door that she finally snapped out of her paralysis.
"Elizabeth, what are–" He froze when he saw her tear stained cheeks and red rimmed eyes. "Oh my god." His eyes locked on hers for a mere second before they were stung with her pain. He shouted for his wife before entering the room to set his brief case on the polished walnut desk. "Elizabeth, let us explain."
"What is it d–" Her sentence was cut off by the sight of Elizabeth sitting behind the desk. Instead of feeling remorseful, or even the slightest bit sorry for the young woman, she was angry. "How did you find that? Who told you about that book?"
Jeff approached his wife with his hands up in surrender to try and calm her down. "Lily, please. Sit down and we'll discuss this like adults." He turned to Elizabeth, his face finally showing compassion for the first time she could remember in twenty one years. He sat down in the leather wing chair with a huff, looking quite older than his forty seven years. "I don't know quite where to start."
Elizabeth chuffed at her supposed father's attempt to gain sympathy. "The beginning sounds good to me."
Jeff closed his eyes and sighed, his hand coming up to pinch the bridge of his nose. "When your mother gave birth to Sarah, she– there were some complications. Somehow she got an infection in her uterus, and if the doctor hadn't removed it, she would've died. The choice was obvious, even if we did want to have more kids, Lily's health was more important." He looked over to his wife, her lips pressed in a thin line, fighting back the flood of emotions that came crashing down on her.
"She was extremely depressed for awhile, but slowly, she came out of it." He leaned forward, staving off the memories of those months. With his elbows resting on his knees, he continued. "We discussed adoption, and even made an appointment to meet with the agency. About two weeks before we were to meet, you showed up."
He looked at her then, cursing himself for not telling her sooner, like he wanted to. But Elizabeth remained stoic. Sitting rigidly in the leather chair, her eyes flooded with tears that refused to fall, her fingers tapping a staccato on the desk, she wouldn't give him the opportunity to see her pain.
"In the middle of the night, the doorbell rang. I wasn't sure who would be calling at that particular hour, but when I opened the door, there you were. Sleeping so peacefully in a white wicker basket, swaddled in a fuzzy peach blanket." Tears pricked his own eyes as the first few years of her life flowed through his head. "You were the answer to our prayers. Everything was perfect, but then, I don't know." He sighed again, leaning back into his chair, and looked at his wife, silently asking her to continue.
Lily's sigh was of exasperation and annoyance that her husband felt so deeply for a child that wasn't their own. "What he is trying so hard not to say is that I stopped loving you." She shrugged, a flicker of regret flashing across her face, "I don't know if I ever really did love you. Yeah, for awhile, it was nice. I felt needed again, but then, I don't know. Just one day I didn't want you here anymore. Unfortunately–" she shot her husband a dirty look, "–Your father grew a conscience and couldn't just dump a two year old in the middle of a mall."
Elizabeth stared at the woman she'd called "mom" her whole life as if seeing her for the very first time. She sat in the matching wing backed chair like she were asking a banker for a loan, not explaining her supposed daughter's history. It was all Elizabeth could do not to hurdle herself over the desk and strangle the woman, but she suppressed the urge and turned back to Jeff.
"She did love you, even if was only for a little while. But I couldn't just leave you somewhere Elizabeth. And, well, I loved you. As much as I could." She flinched at his words, but he didn't see it. "I realize that maybe it wasn't enough, or it wasn't the right way, but I did love you."
She sniffled and wiped her nose with the back of her hand. With a nod, she stood up. "What more could I possibly ask for?" It was Jeff's turn to flinch, and he tried to catch her wrist as she walked past him, but she rebuffed the gesture. . .
Her laugh was bitter, staccato, and it echoed around them. "I had never felt so unwanted in my whole life. If the floor could've opened up and swallowed me whole, I would've welcomed it."
When Jason cleared his throat, it startled her because he has somehow shifted closer to her while she was remembering her so-called parents. "I know it was unfair of them to keep the truth from you, but what does that have to do with who you are?" His eyes remained on the lake, but he continued to steal sideways glances of her.
"It has everything to do with who I am. I don't know who my real parents are, I don't know if I have any brothers or sisters, and as great as Audrey has been to me, I might have a whole set of grandparents whom I've never met! Stories I've never heard, family functions I've never been to, vacations I've never taken." She paused, and her voice grew quieter, "I just want to know why they couldn't love me or take care of me."
Jason's sigh was heavy, and he looked away from her then, unable to watch her silent tears. "You may have missed all those things, but they don't make you who you are. Who you are inside is determined by your friends, the things you like, and the family you're given." When she didn't reply, he tried putting it another way. "Look at it this way, if you hadn't been left at the Webber's, would you have moved to Port Charles?"
"Probably not."
He moved to take her hand again, his thumb sweeping gently over her knuckles, "And if you hadn't moved to Port Charles, would you have met Sonny?" He waited until she shook her head to continue. "And if you hadn't met Sonny, would you be sitting here, with me, right now?" He watched her, waiting for some sort of recognition, and received none.
They continued to sit like that, shoulder to shoulder, with his hand tracing abstract patterns on her palm until Elizabeth let out a long groan. She pulled her hand away from Jason's to rub the tear stains from her face. "I don't know why I told you all of that," she said, chuckling slightly, and peeking at him from the corner of her eye. When he didn't say anything, just sat there and watched her, a shiver skittered up her spine. "What are you thinking?"
His sparkling blue eyes, which looked silver in the moonlight, fixed
on hers, and she felt her breath catch in her throat. "I'm thinking
that if I look at you for one more second, I'm going to have to kiss you."